“Nothin’.”
At this mendacious statement Mrs. Wopp turned on her offspring a withering glance.
“Jevver see sich a useless boy? Been learnin’ spellin’s orl day, I ’xpect.”
Viewing the upturned swill-pail, she suddenly became cynical.
“It’s my doin’s, Mar,” said Betty, “I made it orl up outer my head.”
“She’s a reglar show-lady,” defended Moses. This was hardly a strategic move from Moses, as he had just asserted they had been doing nothing.
Mrs. Wopp was an incurable optimist, although the citadel of her optimism was being assailed. Turning her wrathful gaze from Moses, her eye lighted on the soiled pink hat and antimacassar still worn by Job. She burst into a hearty laugh and turned to Betty.
“Yer a limb o’ Satan orl right. The shawl was needin’ dyein’ anyway. I’ll jist make it green. Yer Par used to say I looked right harnsome in green, so I’ll s’prise him with a new shawl over my shoulders.” She turned to the dog. The strenuous exertions of the afternoon had noticeably reduced his girth.
“This here dorg is clean tuckered out,” she declared, “ef he swallered a green pea, you’d see it goin’ down orl the way.”
In a few days the sight of his wife wrapped in a shawl the color of an unripe cucumber had a rejuvenating influence upon Ebenezer Wopp. He did not say much, being a man of few words, but his sentiments were inscribed in cramped illegible writing on a slip of paper to be handed down to posterity.